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Sunday, September 28, 2014

I Am Making My Move

I am, as of this post, committed to writing a novel. It is fiction. Indeed, it is a genre fiction novel in the Speculative Fiction realm (Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror) because that genre area is one I am very familiar with and know well. That does not mean that I seek only to find a way to finance further operations; I am, as so many before me, using the creation of literature to communicate vitally important truths in a manner I cannot achieve in any other way. I am on my third draft, and I finished Chapter 5 on Thursday of last week. I start Chapter 6 tomorrow.

As this is a novel written as fiction, and intended to be sold as a commercial product, my first duty as a writer is to entertain. Nothing else I have to say means a damn thing if the reader is not willing to listen, and readers that enjoy what they read are more willing to do just that. So, no, I won't be following Ayn Rand's example; I'm aiming more for Tolkien, in that I too want to create a myth in order to demonstrate the power and importance of narrative as well as demonstrate how and why someone would want to use such power- i.e. why Empire wants such fundamental dominance of the individual.

I am not new at writing fiction. I've maintained an original fiction blog for five years now, and I've used that time to not only hone my craft as a writer but develop the discipline necessary to finish a project and make it readable. I have the benefit of knowing successful professionals, and I do read regularly. In other words, I have the bare minimum needed to seriously consider and attempt this project. I have Beta readers lined up to read the drafts as I finish them, and I expect that I will have something to offer sometime in 2015.

The consequence for my shift is that I will reduce this blog in priority. While a weekly schedule isn't that hard to keep up, and I've paced myself so far to handle this and the novel writing, I repeat what I said previously: should there be a schedule conflict, or some other pressing need, do count on this blog getting the chop first.